Study Shows Bringing In Skilled Immigrants Does Not Hurt Americans; May Increase Innovation

from the bringing-some-data dept

We've written quite a few times about the importance of skilled immigration and the questions surrounding the H-1B immigration program (and some related programs). We have been pretty clear that we agree that the H-1B program is abused too often, and that it could be vastly improved, but that the general principle of getting skilled immigrants, especially in key innovation areas, into the US working for US companies is a good thing for innovation. We will freely admit to the fact that there are problems and abuses with the system, but there are also many success stories. Many of the complaints against the program often seem to come across as thinly (or sometimes not so thinly) veiled racism, concerning "them" coming to "steal our jobs."

Thankfully, there's now some additional research that shows these particular worries are mostly hogwash. theodp points our attention to some new research about the impact of H-1B visa recipients on the job market, innovation and the economy. After going through a lot of data, the researchers concluded that increasing the number of H-1B visas does not negatively impact American jobs.

We do not find any substantive effect on native scientists and engineers across a range of labor market outcomes like employment levels, mean wages, and unemployment rates.

In other words, for all the talk of H-1Bs stealing jobs, depressing wages, increasing unemployment among American engineers, there's simply no evidence to support that. Now, the research did debunk one claim from the other side of the debate as well: many supporters of H-1B visas have suggested that skilled foreign workers create even more jobs. However, the data showed no evidence of that. In other words, they did not take away jobs, but they did not then create additional new jobs, beyond their own positions, in most cases, at an aggregate level.

Separately, the researchers also tried to look at whether or not an increase in H-1Bs resulted in greater innovation, and they concluded that yes, it did. Now, I have some problems with the methodology here, in that it uses patents as a proxy for innovation, which I've always found to be a very inaccurate methodology. At best, the study seems to show that when there's greater foreign skilled immigration allowed, there is also a greater number of patents awarded to people who are likely of foreign origin. Additionally, there was no corresponding decrease in patents given to non-foreigners (again supporting the claim that H-1Bs are not taking away jobs). I don't think this is a proper measure of actual innovation, but it's still an interesting figure.

The new guidance, issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says a company founder may qualify for EB-2 Green Card visa if his or her position would report to a board of directors.

This visa also requires advanced degrees or some exceptional ability, which is "a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business," according to USCIS.

Similarly, an "immigrant founder" may be eligible for an H-1B visa "if there is a way to demonstrate that if in fact there is a separation between your role as founder and that role as employee," said Chopra in the Webcasted presentation.

We know of too many stories of brilliant engineers being unable to start their companies in Silicon Valley because crazy immigration rules forced them back to their home countries. I can't fathom why people are against such startup visas. These are, clearly, cases where the individuals are not "taking jobs from Americans" because these jobs don't exist if the startup cannot be founded. I'm glad to see that the White House isn't even waiting for the various attempts by Congress to carve out a separate startup visa, but are using what they can do with the existing program to use it for this important purpose.

Don't you ever get tired of going off the deep end?

Just a skim refutes your take:
"(The research was especially challenging due to a tremendous lack of detailed data about H-1B applications, says Kerr. "It's an unfortunate event that as the H1-B issue has become more controversial, the amount of available data has shrunk.")" -- SLIM DATA.

"More importantly, the research seemed to rule out the idea that the H-1B program was stealing jobs from born-and-bred Americans. But it also ruled out the opposing idea that the program created a huge number of jobs for Americans." -- NO OBVIOUS OR NECESSARY CONCLUSION.

Observable fact is: unemployment even by official figures is WAY UP of late and getting worse. So I'll go with the obvious.

Re: Re: Re: Don't you ever get tired of going off the deep end?

There are plenty of studies that go down this sort of road, but they often are too narrow in scope to truly decide if there is an cause and effect connection or not based on immigration.

As an example, if the job market in researchers is "tight", and the number of H1-B workers who will work for a lower wage / less benefits is high, would students coming through the university system decide to focus on other areas rather then goal towards pure research?

Job markets, especially in narrow fields, sort of appear to be self-levelling. Nobody wants to spend 5 - 8 years in post secondary education to come out without a job, so they tend to aim to where they will find jobs. If there is an area that is dominated by "lower cost" H1-B workers, there is the potential that students are just majoring in other areas or focusing on other markets. So the number of graduates looking for these jobs is down, so it appears that no jobs are lost to the H1-B immigrants.

My personal feeling is that at something like 7.5% unemployment, the government would be wise to significantly cut back the allowable number of H1-B applicants, and rather invest in training and schooling to get the country's own population to get to work. Get the unemployment rate down, and then allow the H1-B workers to come back in.

Historical connection

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of this same effect from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many US immigrants arrived from western Europe. During his most patent-crazy years, when electromechanical inventions were flying out of his workshops on a near-weekly basis, Thomas Edison entrusted much of his development and fabrication to German-born engineers, whose niche skills matched his precise needs; and during this same period, European chemists drove innovation at fledgling US pharmaceutical firms, providing expertise which American-educated workers couldn't match. In both examples, foreign-born experts only served to advance US innovation... they "stole" no jobs whatsoever, since the needed skills were as yet undeveloped here.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't you ever get tired of going off the deep end?

Hold on a moment

Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman, has an opinion about this that deserves wider publicity. As he wrote in his memoir, here quoted from its review in Newsweek,

"As awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to be, its Achilles' heel is a growing perception that its rewards, increasingly skewed to the skilled, are not distributed justly. ... A dysfunctional US ... education system has failed to ... prevent a shortage of skilled workers and a surfeit of lesser skilled ones, expanding the pay gap between the two groups. Unless America's education system can raise skill levels as quickly as technology requires, skilled workers will continue to earn greater wage increases, leading to ever more disturbing extremes of income concentration. ... we need to address increasing income equality now. ... by opening our borders to large numbers of highly skilled immigrant workers, we would ... provide a new source of competition for higher earning employees, thus driving down their wages."

While I agree the rewards of capitalism are not distributed justly, I was under the impression that they are increasingly skewed to the rich, not the skilled. But then I'm just a humble higher-earning employee, not a great financier, so what do I know.

What isn't discussed is the impact to the host country. Often these countries are impoverished. Losing their skilled labor force to the United Stated may adversely impact the host countries by the nature of giving up their best and brightest.

Re: There are two problems with skilled immigration

Yes remove motivations such as greater pay, more resources, more funding, larger target markets etc etc. We should outlaw all those things.

Your arguments have some flaws.

In regards to your point 1, discoveries and advancements in the US are not confined to the US. All those technological advances will find their way into the world market and benefit the world. Something that cannot happen in countries that do not have the resources to fund and market them in such a large scale.

For point 2, Education investment shouldn't come from the government. Much like government job creation, the money the government dumps into education is often wasted on programs that do not benefit the economy or society. Most government education funds are wrapped up in administration and not actual education. The government needs to step out and let the economy and society determine what investments need to be made in education.

Re:

Ah I see. So it's better to deprive these skilled individuals of resources that allow them to work to their potential and increase their standing in the world community and be more capable to affect real change in their home country?

Its not the skilled workers we are concerned about...

I don't think anyone is seriously arguing against letting in skilled immigrants. What people argue against is unskilled immigrants who slip in illigally, come over on a boat (which has to be rescued after it starts to sink off our coast), or land here and claim they will be tortured so we shouldn't send them back. Further, once skilled workers come here, they bring their spouse, children, and parents over, which, more than likely, are unskilled.

Re: Don't you ever get tired of going off the deep end?

"Observable fact is: unemployment even by official figures is WAY UP of late and getting worse. So I'll go with the obvious."

I'm a Systems Programmer. My field has about 3% unemployment. There is high demand.

Unskilled labor unemployment is high, but if you got a skill that isn't over-saturated, you'll find a job.

Since we're talking about innovation, we're talking about high end skilled jobs. I'm sure unemployment is really good. Anyway, innovation brings in money to the USA. Even if you paid an immigrant $200k/year for an R&D job, they probably create over $1mil of wealth for the nation as a whole, not to mention they'll be spending most of their money locally.

Re: Re: There are two problems with skilled immigration

Yes remove motivations such as greater pay, more resources, more funding, larger target markets etc etc. We should outlaw all those things.

Remove!=Outlaw

One way to remove some of those motivations might be a less exploitative foriegn policy that doesn't use so called aid as a bribe to help our own corporations.

Your arguments have some flaws.

Not if you think clearly and precisely enough about them. Actually it is the assumptions that you made about my arguments that are flawed.

In regards to your point 1, discoveries and advancements in the US are not confined to the US. All those technological advances will find their way into the world market and benefit the world. Something that cannot happen in countries that do not have the resources to fund and market them in such a large scale.

You could invest in those countries directly in order to provide those resources. That way you get more development for the rest of the people and bigger markets for our own exports.

At present we seem to invest mostly in grunt enterprises in those countries with low wages and workers who can't afford to buy their own output - let alone ours.

For point 2, Education investment shouldn't come from the government.
Much like government job creation, the money the government dumps into education is often wasted on programs that do not benefit the economy or society.

That one sounds like a faith based argument to me - sorry - I don't share your religion.

Most government education funds are wrapped up in administration and not actual education.

Same is true of any well established enterprise with a top down structure - public or private. I've worked in both public and private sectors - and frankly the idea that one is somehow more efficient than the other on the basis of it's private vs public status is just laughable.

The government needs to step out and let the economy and society determine what investments need to be made in education.

You'll get very little without the government channeling in most of the funds. List the countries that don't publicly fund at least 50% of education and I suspect you'll be looking at a catalogue of 3rd world hell holes.

Job stealing

I can't say they're stealing our jobs, because you've already poisoned the well, declaring that would be racist. Besides, the job isn't "mine".

May I say that all of us engineers (in any particular specialty) are competing for the same jobs, and the more qualified engineers there are, the less likely any one of us is to get a job, or if we have one, to be paid as highly as otherwise? Simple supply and demand!

Add to this that the vast majority of guest workers are younger, meaning they will accept lower wages. (I know, I could accept the pay of someone with 25 fewer year's experience, but in reality most employers don't want to underpay, because of the realistic fear that an experienced engineer will be lured away by higher pay. Even if that were not the case, the wage compression is why I advise bright young people to go into law or finance.) In concert with that, a guest worker's visa, and permanent residency sponsorship, is tied to the job, so he is more likely to accept lower wages in exchange for being able to stay in the country and be paid in dollars. Again, I don't own the job nor the right to a higher salary, but surely the presence of younger engineers who can be paid in visas instead of dollars depresses the wages I command.

bar the dim, non-industrious, non-creative

"If we bar all the intelligent educated hard-working talented people from entering the US, I'm sure the situation here will improve."

Right. Instead of flooding US universities and job markets with below-par foreign students and guest-workers as the F, H-1B, J. and L visas do now, we should establish some standards so that we are admitting only the most intelligent (top half of a percentile, for instance), the most creative, and most industrious.

There are plenty of data showing a sufficient or excessive supply of US citizen STEM workers, and many additional anecdotes of direct and indirect displacement of US citizens by guest-workers. Some studies over the last 5 years suggest we have up to 3 times as many able and willing US citizen STEM workers as are being employed as such.

Re:

US DoEducation data on degrees earned confirm that US students are very responsive to labor market conditions, just as NSF predicted back in the 1980s. As soon as they flooded the job markets with foreign students and cheap foreign labor, US students started shifting to other fields. When US STEM job markets improve a little, US students and experienced, under-employed US STEM workers pour back into the field.

Traditional STEM unemployment rates were in the neighborhood of 1.75%. General "full employment" unemployment rates have ratcheted up for decades, with expectations shifting from 3.3% to 4% to 5%. So, I'd have to say that when general US unemployment rates exceed 4%, or STEM unemployment rates exceed 2.25%, the federal government should increase standards for visa applicants, and decrease numbers.

Employers have been encouraged, over the last 30 years, to curtail their own investments in employee education and training, relocation and even interviewing. Accordingly, tax breaks for the costs of bringing in US citizens for interviews, for relocating US citizen new-hires and retained employees, and for education and training of US citizen employees should be boosted, established, or re-established.

With decades of over-population and over-crowding, the USA should gradually lower the percentages of foreign-born in the USA from recent 16%-20% levels down to a target level between 1% and 5%, once again, by admitting only the very best students and guest-workers; and only the most deserving refugees.

Answer one question, cheap labor shill

If bringing in cheap, foreign workers through this slave visa does not "hurt Americans", how come there are zero jobs in IT in my region? There are thousands of H-1B workers in my region yet zero jobs. I guess the readers of this "article" are simply supposed to abandon all common sense and accept another fake study.

Meanwhile, software product development production worker employment has been flat since 2000-2001 at about 212K, while the supply of able and willing US citizen workers has been growing by tens of thousands per year, and productivity has continued to climb.

The only STEM niches increasing in employment are bodyshopping, including both domestic and cross-border bodyshopping, while real employment continues to be anemic.

Compensation shows no signs of shortage-induced spiking. But compensation per hour is a dicey indicator for several reasons. Bodyshopping makes it misleading because hundreds of thousands of people getting 3-month gigs and then not being considered in the average pay statistics at all for months or years on end is not the same as those same people being steadily employed through the whole decade, nor through an expected (in light of today's much longer life-expectancies at adult-hood) career of 40-60 years. Indeed, in STEM fields, age discrimination has become quite blatant beginning at age 35, regardless of talent, knowledge and experience. If there were a shortage of talent you would not see that; there would be vigorous efforts to retain such talent with ever-increasing rewards and increasing life-time employer investments in employee education and training and opportunities for personal research projects at the cutting edge. Another problem with using hourly compensation as an indicator is that in many STEM shops it has been common since at least the 1950s for hours worked to be systematically under-reported, and hence steeply under-compensated. (We never were clock-punchers or clock-watchers at heart.)

Re: Historical connection

The earliest recorded use of guest-workers I've run across was in the early 1600s, when about 150 German construction workers were shipped in for the purpose of building "Bermuda Hundred" along the James River in Virginia.

Yes, it's fine to admit extraordinarily intelligent or talented people, or those with especially valuable knowledge (intellectual property; and knowing how to fill out some bodyshop's project tracking forms does not count).

Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite of what we have been doing since at least the Hart-Celler-Kennedy Act of 1965, and certainly not since the Kennedy-d'Amato-Dodd-Moynihan-Simpson immigration act of 1990. Since then, it's been all about cheap, pliant labor with flexible ethics (i.e. willing to do things contrary to the professional ethics, and, apparently including many projects/products involving massive privacy violations).

The H-1B program has no requirement that the applicants be especially bright or knowledgeable or creative or industrious (nor do student visas). According to USCIS figures, hundreds have been approved for H-1B visas who lacked the equivalent of a US high school diploma, and thousands who lacked the equivalent of a US bachelor's degree, even though the statute has a lip-service requirement that every H-1B recipient have at least the equivalent of a US bachelor's degree.

US Representative Virgil Goode noted in his article just a couple days ago, "In 2010, only 0.2% of legal immigrants were investors, 5.2% received advanced degree visas, and 1.1% were listed as having 'extraordinary abilities'."

Re: Its not the skilled workers we are concerned about...

"I don't think anyone is seriously arguing against letting in skilled immigrants. What people argue against is unskilled immigrants who slip in [illegally]..." and, e.g. H-1B and L and J visa over-stayers.

Well, everyone has some kind of skill, so "skilled immigrants" means nothing; it's just an empty propaganda term. (E.g. there are people who can do that thing where they blow between their fingers and make a horrendously loud whistle. That's a skill, but not that valuable for most purposes. And there are people who far surpass most of us in the skill to carve a canoe out of a big log, but that's no reason to import thousands of them.)

What's important is the level of skill and the rarity and value of the skill. What we're opposed to -- in light of the on-going glut of very bright, talented, knowledgeable, creative, industrious US citizen STEM workers -- is admitting hundreds of thousands of foreign students each year who are not especially bright, about 110K H-1B guest-workers per year who lack rare, valuable, high-level skills and are not well above the US STEM worker average in the brightness department, and more thousands of L guest-workers, and J exchange-workers who are not well above the US average. (And I wouldn't mind reasonable numbers of refugees, either.)

There need to be some reasonable standards and limits, but for the last 22-50 years there have not been, what low, weak standards there were have all been undermined and the US job markets of every variety and level glutted.

The problem people have is not with legal immigrants...

The problem most people I know have is with ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, not the legal kind. The legal kind are more often than not skilled and productive and came here through proper channels that control migration. These, I think, most people have no problem with.

The problem you seem to be missing Mike is the huge yearly influx of illegal immigrants.

The people that hop the border and come over here like cattle in trucks doing jobs under the table (and therefore not taxed like the rest of us), taking much lower pay, generating more crime (I live near where a lot of this crap happens), and refusing to learn the local language (we speak English here, NOT SPANISH) and not learning the culture.

And then expecting a free education, free benefits (which they did not pay taxes for), and free health care (since there is no SSN to sick collection agencies on). And on top of that they demand that we learn their native language. Which is a complete outrage. They came here, they need to adapt to our country, not the other way around.

These are the people we have a problem with Masnick.

Now, I am all for people learning multiple languages (though I refuse Spanish out of defiance of this issue). It is beneficial on many levels.

I am also for integrating people, as long as they come through the proper channels and don't force us to adopt their language and culture. If you move to another country willingly then you need to willingly adapt to it and pay back into the system.

We hate freeloaders, not foreigners. And we have enough freeloaders in our country as it is.

Re: Job stealing

Yep and that is exactly the point of HB1 visas, to bring in enough talent so wages don't get out of control, making attractive to for companies to go to other countries which would result in the same thing or serve as a multiplier for less jobs inside the country.

What would you prefer, to have a pay cut or to loose the job entirely?

Once it is over there, it will be difficult to make it go back specially if companies can assure that there will be no competition at home using IP laws.

But I would argue that talent breeds opportunities, higher education provides the individual with the tools he needs to deal with more situations than others, the focus should not be on pay but how to make a decent living without having to make big sacrifices, we are in a global economy, people can like it or not, but famished people in Asia and Africa are not going to refuse work because you or I can't get more money, instead how do we reduce the need for more money?

What can I do to reduce my own costs of living?
What can I do inside my own community to make it function in the face of reduced financial assets?

Re: Re: Answer one question, cheap labor shill

Why should commenters do your job for you? Is the lawsuit against Infosys anecdotal? Is the GAO report anecdotal? Just use google and you'll get plenty of proof. You can also use YouTube to see how scumbag immigration attorneys avoid hiring Americans. By the way, You do realize how ridiculous it is to condemn "anecdotal" evidence and then mention your friend, correct?

“THEY’RE TAKING OUR JOBS!!!!!”

Where do jobs come from?

Do they descend like Manna from Heaven? Are they tediously scraped out of the ground, one by one, like Rare Diamonds or flecks of Gold? Are they Trophies wrested from the Jaws of Death by Heroic Quests to the Ends of the Earth? Are they created by the Government passing Laws? Are they something to be jealously hoarded, and not simply given out to All and Sundry?

None of these things. They are created by businesses. And where do businesses come from?

They are created by people who see an opportunity and go for it. What sort of people are more likely to see an opportunity where others don’t?

Those with perhaps a different outlook on things, who haven’t been taught that something cannot be done. Often, those who come from outside the system—in other words, immigrants.

You're kind of missing the root of the problem here, I think. Everyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics and/or history already knows this talk about taking jobs, depressing wages etc is pure horseshit, including some of the people shouting it the loudest. It's a convenient, superficially plausible rationalisation of their instinctive fear/hatred of anyone who isn't white, Judeo-Christian and who speaks English as their first language.

Re: Re: Re: Answer one question, cheap labor shill

"You do realize how ridiculous it is to condemn "anecdotal" evidence and then mention your friend, correct?"

From a purely logical standpoint, I would have to support you.

But I can see how Mike accidentally compared it. You did says "in your region" and Mike said his friend "on the internet".

The internet better reflects the average and "your region" could easily have a bias.

Mike could have been comparing the "anecdotalness" of the areas. So while your region anecdotally has low IT demand, the entire USA does not, and thus the internet application isn't anecdotal.

Again, I do side with you that the word "anecdotal" is really meant to convey the idea of a non-scientific "fact", but I do agree that your general location could easily have a hiring bias much different than the average.

Masnick is a Shill...

...for the high-tech junta that sponsors him and depends on these low-skill scabs to suppress local wages. In his snarky manner, he baits and ridicules Americans who are having difficulty finding work in IT, or at least have seen their wages stagnant since he was a privileged punk at an Ivy League School.

And if you dare bring up the Indian factor, he'll devolve into grade school tactics of yelling "that's racist!"

Shills like this punk are the reason some IT departments are 80-90% Indian and companies like Molina and Infosys are being sued for discriminatory policies.

Yeah, Mr. Collaborator Coward and Enemy of the American Techie, don't let economics and basic theories like supply and demand get in the way of your agenda.

Damn right we're angry. When punks like you bait us and mock us for not eagerly taking lower salaries in Mumbai-like sweatshops, you got it coming.

Thinly vailed racism?

The GAO released a report to Congress during the past few months reporting that the H1B visa was being used to import cheap, entry level workers from the third world, primarily India and Communist China. In fact over half of the visa recipients were entry level workers. Fewer than 7% of the recipients of the H1B visa were compensated at rates typical of those workers considered to be "highly skilled" workers.

The fact of the matter is that the H1B visa, the L1 visa, the OPT visa, the B1 visa, the F1 visa, etc are used to import replacement workers, not highly skilled workers.

The instigators, their apparatchik, the collaborators, the enemy-within, the useful-idiots...

H-1b, L-1s, OPT, J-1, B-1, lotteries, green-cards, and on and on, and on, and on, it is no longer enough to stand as a nation and compete with the world-at-large, but no, the world at large will be brought to you, so that you may compete with them in your own offices and worksites……

There are real solutions, not lies masquerading as same, but few, will even speak of them, let alone…

In a sane world, visas such as H-1b, (also referred to, incorrectly, as H1b…) L-1, etc., (We can keep the O-1, which was meant for true genius) would be suspended. Millions of our better paying jobs would be instantly made available, in America, for Americans.

How, can anyone speak of returning jobs to Americans, while they ignore, or worse, condone, the continued replacement of Americans, in American offices and worksites, with foreign nationals, at a ‘clip of’ hundreds of thousands (we are not told the exact number! more likely, all-told, closer to a million or more…) per year?!

And you will be competing for suppressed wages, and even where qualified, will most likely be cleverly bypassed by the multi-national corporate slave owners, masquerading as U.S., sovereign entities……

We won’t even talk about national security!

Over two (2) decades of alphabet-soup visas like H-1b, etc., have decimated the tech sector, and are impacting other U.S. based jobs, such as, nursing, teaching, etc.

The rabbit hole is deep, and wide spread…I cannot possibly explain just how treasonous these suicidal policies are, and keep this comment brief.

We should also revoke some or all green-cards. Again, a massive number of American jobs would be returned to Americans.

And then there is the issue of sending our jobs offshore, often implemented by those brought to our country on visa, or those having become a green-card holder, who then coordinate the shipping of entire departments, knowledge-bases out of our country, ultimately, entire industries.

Then for the low to medium wage jobs, we can look at the wide-open borders, and the traitors that advocate a nation without enforcement of its own borders, its laws, and disinterest in its own sovereign best-interest, survival.

And yes, it is Americans who have facilitated this betrayal of Americans, by corporations, supported by a sold-out government and press.

Constantly having your leg peed-on, and being told that it is raining, is the insult-to-injury!

The instigators, their apparatchik, the collaborators, the enemy-within, the useful-idiots, are ‘p*ssing’ on our nation’s workforce, and cheap labor, political-correctness, are their weapons of choice.”

Re: Masnick is a Shill...

The latest US GAO report regarding H-1B visas discusses at some length the point that the vast majority of H-1Bs are hired into very low-level positions. In fact, most are at Level I, officially defined by the DOL as needing a "basic understand­ing of duties and perform routine tasks requiring limited judgment." This belies the lobbyists' and shills' claims that H-1Bs

The H-1B visa is simply a legalized tool for corporations to discriminate based on age (i.e., H-1Bs are mostly, if not all, young), and therefore, pay less.

Re:

NASSCOM at it agai

I wonder how much India's NASSCOM paid this writer to pump out this obviously pro-India PR? We are being manipulated by foreign powers so that IQ81 idiots who have never even seen a lightswitch can come here and rob us blind.

TENS of millions of Americans who created Silicon Valley are now out of work.

Classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, aliens who are inadmissible under the following paragraphs are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States: ... (D) Immigrant membership in totalitarian party (i) In general Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible. ... (5) Labor certification and qualifications for certain immigrants (A) Labor certification (i) In general Any alien who seeks to enter the United States for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor is inadmissible, unless the Secretary of Labor has determined and certified to the Secretary of State and the Attorney General that— (I) there are not sufficient workers who are able, willing, qualified (or equally qualified in the case of an alien described in clause (ii)) and available at the time of application for a visa and admission to the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform such skilled or unskilled labor, and (II) *** the employment of such alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed. ***

Companies ruined or almost ruined by imported Indian labor

Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired.
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).
Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006.
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010).
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.
Caterpillar misses earnings a mere 4 months after outsourcing to India, Inc.
Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution.
Dell - call center (closed in India)
Delta call centers (closed in India)
Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty.
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers)
Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S.
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing.
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled)
MyNines - A startup founded and run by Indian national Apar Kothari went belly up after throwing millions of America's VC $ down the drain.
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed).
PepsiCo - Slides from #1 to #3 during Indian CEO Indra Nooyi' watch.
Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading.
Qantas - See AirBus above
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m).
SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010.
Singapore airlines (IT functions taken over in 2009 by TCS, website trashed in August, 2011)
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired)
State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued
State of Texas failed IBM project.
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle).
UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget.
Union Bank of California - Cancelled Finacle project run by India's InfoSys in 2011.
United - call center (closed in India)
Victorian Order of Nurses, Canada (Payroll system screwed up by SAP/IBM in mid-2011)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).

I could post the whole list here but I don't want to crash any servers.

Some simple facts about highly-skilled workers from the 3rd world

This is not opinion. These are facts.

- The H-1B guest worker visa program was started in 1990 with an annual cap of 65,000 visas.

- The L-1 visa program was started in the 1970s and was designed for intracompany transfers only. It has since been abused to bring in foreign nationals for services companies and then place them at their clients - which is illegal.

- From 1978 to 1998 - including the 90's boom - the demographic in the IT industry was 98% white American males. The U.S. economy was booming in 1998.

- In late 1998, India (and the rest of the world) sat up and took notice of the huge amount of wealth America's tech workers were generating. India decided they wanted to take over what Americans had created and get the $ for themselves. But how? Answer: Public Relations of course! So India's IT lobby, NASSCOM, hired D.C. PR/lobbying firm Hill & Knowlton to plant fake "worker shortage" stories in the U.S. media in 1998. While most Americans were busy enjoying the fruits of their labors, India was plotting how to invade and take over America. This barrage of news alleging a worker shortage story was the vehicle by which India, Inc. convinced America to permit the next step:

- In late 1998 and early 2000, the H-1B visa caps were raised from 65,000 a year to 115,000 per year and 195,00 per year, respectively. Then-president Bill Clinton - not George Bush - signed the increases. Tech workers from India didn't begin arriving in the U.S. in large numbers until late 1998. How could they have created the 90's tech boom when they weren't even here? The tech boom was created by Americans. Now that Americans have been driven out by the imported workers, the Silicon Valley and U.S. economies are a disaster.

- As a result of the 1998 & 2000 increases, 1.1 million foreign guest workers came into the U.S. from October 1998 to October 2003. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, 90% of those H-1B visas went to people from India. These people promptly took over America's tech jobs and drove Americans out of them.

- A unknown number more came in during the same time period on the L-1 intracompany transfer visa, which has been heavily abused by Indian outsourcing companies such as Wipro, InfoSys, and Tata. The number of L-1s who came in from 1998-2003 is at least 1 million, maybe 2 million.

- There is no yearly cap on L-1 visas.

- The H-1B visa cap reverted back to 65,000 per year in Oct. 2003. Despite this, over a million foreign guest workers continue to come into the U.S. every single year - even during periods of record unemployment, such as today.

- The U.S. economy went from booming to collapse the same year of the 2nd H-1B increase - proof that the foreign guest workers did not perform as promised.

- In fact, the U.S. economy has been in decline since 2000 or 2001. The government tried to offset the decline by making huge amounts of cheap credit available to make up for lost jobs and lower wages caused by the flood of cheap labor from the developing world. The credit ran out in 2008 and the real economy now is the result.

- There has been no real economic growth in the U.S. since the 2000-2001 collapse.

- Since the millions of guest workers arrived in 1998 and 2000, 14-16 million white collar American jobs have been destroyed. Approximately 1-2 million of those have been offshored - the rest have been destroyed. Promises by guest workers to help the U.S. economy in 1998 have never materialized. The opposite has happened.

- Despite common myths, there is no legal requirement in the H-1B laws which requires an employer to look for and hire an American worker instead of a foreign worker.

- Protections for American workers are provided in Federal law under Title 8, Section 1182, which defines who is an inadmissible alien, but those laws are being ignored and are not enforced.

- Most H-1Bs that enter the U.S. from developing countries such as India and China are not skilled as claimed - they are being trained by Americans when they get here - which makes both the applicant and hiring company guilty of fraud, which is a felony.

- American companies are using the H-1B and other work visa programs as a way to displace and bypass American workers in favor of cheaper foreign labor.

- Most foreign imported workers who come to the U.S. to work on work visas make less than their American counterparts. Companies love imported workers because companies think they increase profits by cutting costs. Cost-cutting is a sign of a company in trouble. In reality, long-term cheaper foreign workers harm American profits because long-term increased profits rely on innovation, not lower costs - and countries like India and China have terrible track records in innovation.

- Due to historical and ideological factors, most of the foreign workers we are brining to the U.S. are deliberately keeping skilled Americans out of the workforce by denying them jobs. The foreign workers claim Americans are too stupid, but Americans created the IT industry. The real reason Americans are being kept out of the workforce is because of racism, hypernationalism, communists in corporations who hate capitalism and hate America, and because of historical resentments by the guest workers themselves. Britain invaded and colonized India 150 years ago. Indians think the evil white man stole all their wealth. Hence Indians think they are entitled to break the law and deny jobs to Americans. It's payback time. Britain colonized China by taking control of Hong Kong from 1898 to 1997. The Opium Wars enslaved China and weakened it. Hence most Chinese resent hate white people. The Chinese are also deeply jealous that the U.S. has far surpassed them in just 250 years and China has been around for 6000 years.

- Both China and India resent America because both countries are communist or socialist and hence the U.S. would not trade with them for 50 years - from the end of World War 2 until globalization began in 1997. Most Chinese and Indians believe that they were kept out of the world economy by America and hence they want to do the same to us. Mexicans hate Americans because NAFTA disrupted the local Mexican economy when it was flooded with American goods by greedy American executives who wanted to find new consumers to sell to.

- Foreign guest workers are conducting a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing - cleansing Americans from jobs in their own country. The reasons why are covered above.

- China is all about "saving face". America's success makes China look bad. The Chinese are jealous of us. Many imported guest workers from China will deny jobs to brilliant Americans simply because they are Americans - even to the point of making companies fail by staffing them with incompetent foreign guest workers who can't do the jobs. Can't hire Americans you know - that increases the prestige of Americans and decreases the prestige of Chinese. What do they care what they do to Americans? As long as the can fake it long enough to grift out VC-funded companies and send the money home, it's ok - after all, the evil white man oppressed China and hence China is entitled to America's money - even without performing as advertised. The cleanout of American VC-funded tech companies by fraudulent foreign workers is one of the prime causes of both the "credit crisis" (money going overseas when foreign workers send their paychecks home), and high unemployment (foreign workers not doing the jobs, and cusing companies to fail, thus reducing the number of jobs in the economy). It's not just how many people are working that matters, it's who is working. Workers from developing countries not only want our money, they want to see our economy fail - after all, that lowers U.S. prestige in the world and makes the other countries who can't compete look relatively better. If you can't beat your competition, just attack them instead, take their money, but collapse all their companies while you are at it.

- The U.S. currently exports $45 billion a year in wages to India alone and over $70 bllion a year to Mexico. Wonder where the capital in our banks is going? It's not being used to create jobs in America or being spent into the American economy - it's being shipped overseas by guest workers here.

- India wants to be known as the IT capital of the world - despite the fact that India is incapable of creating it own operating system. Name one software application that comes from India. Name one Indian software company anyone has heard of - not services companies like Wipro, Tata, etc - Indian companies that actually produce software they sell - none exist.

- More software comes from Scandanavia than from India.

- The average Indian IQ is 81. The average American IQ is 98. The average Japanese IQ is 107. The average German IQ is 100. Why aren't we importing a million workers a year from Japan and Germany? Why only from 3rd world countries? Answer: people from 3rd world countries are not the best and the brightest - they are the opposite - we are importing them for International Socialism - so that they can enjoy the fruits of the labor of productive countries like the U.S.

- Name one new industry or invention to come out of India or China in 250 years. Auto industry - America. TV & radio industries - America. Aerospace industries - America. Light bulbs, integrated circuits, computers, the internet, software - all of it comes from America, invented and created by Americans. Modern manufacturing, assembly line process - American. Now name one new industry or invention to come from India or China in 250 years - there are none. America doesn't need these workers.

Foreign-born founders and their contributions to America

- There has been much talk recently of the contributions of foreign-born founders to America. While it is true that there are some few rare exceptions, the reality is the vast majority of immigrants are here to take from us and send money home - as well as to acquire skills from Americans so they can be more like us.

- A few immigrants have made contributions to America - many of them from Europe. Many of them over 40 years ago. Einstein and von Braun come to mind. A few others more recently from non-European countries - Vinhod Kosla at Sun, the creator of Hotmail, or Amit Singh. But again, they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. The fact is, a decade of importing millions of foreign workers is not making the U.S. economy grow - it was growing in the 90's - before they got here, not now.

- For every one outstanding immigrant who does contribute, we are bringing in at least 10,000 destructive ones who are only here for our money and jobs. - immigrants who take and destroy as our economy is now proving.

- Let's talk companies and who founded them. As a rationale for why immigrants need to come help America, the immigrants themselves have been telling lies about who founded what companies. Let's set the record straight.

- Intel - Intel was not founded by immigrants. It was founded by 2 Americans - Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame).

- Yahoo! - Yahoo! was founded by one American - David Filo - and one immigrant - Jerry Yang. But Yang came to the U.S. at age 6 from Taiwan - a developed country. He was raised here and went to school here. He's more American than immigrant.

- Google - Google was founded by one American - Larry Page - and one immigrant - Sergei Brin. But Brin came from Russia, not India or China - and he came here at age 3 and grew up here and was educated here. He's more American than immigrant.

- Microsoft - Founded by two Americans - Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

- Apple - Founded by two Americans - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Apple is booming today. Why? Apple CLOSED its R&D in India in 2006 and hires mostly Americans for all of its software development. 0% of Apple's software development is done offshore.

- Sun - Founded by 2 Americans, 1 German, and 1 Indian. Sun's CEO for the 1st 25 years was Scott McNeally - an American. Sun's operating system was architected by another American co-founder - Bill Joy. In 2001 Sun was taken over by legions of foreign guest workers from India and China - and Sun is now losing $150 million a quarter and is being sold off to Oracle to avoid the embarrassment of closing its doors with foreign guest workers running it.

Now let's go down the list of companies damaged or destroyed by foreign imported labor since 1998:

PeopleSoft - Taken over by imported Indian workers in 2000 - had to be sold off to Oracle to avoid embarrassment of closing.

Sun Micro - Dying. See above.

Bell Labs - Taken over by Indian-national Arun Netravalli in 2003. Bell Labs where the transistor, UNIX, and the C programming language were invented is now being turned into a shopping mall.

Quark - Taken over by Indian national Alukah Kamar - who laid off all the American developers and sent the work to India. The products became so bad that 60% of Quark's customer base defected to Adobe InDesign, never to return. Kamar was later fired but not before permanent harm was done to Quark.

Computer Associates' former CEO from India is now serving 12 years in federal prison for fraud.

MIT Media Lab Asia - Closed in 2006 due to faked invoices in India.

Intel Whitefield processor project - this project in India was cancelled when Intel discovered that many of the "engineers" had faked their resumes.

ComAir - ComAir's 100% Indian IT staff caused the nationwide 2005 Christmas day airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int in the crew scheduling software they were working on. So much for the best and the brightest from overseas contributing to the American economy.

Boeing Dreamliner - Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner airplane has been delayed 5 times - in part because of failed software written by India's HCL Technologies - whose CEO once said "American grads are unemployable".

Lehman - This failed Wall St. institution had purchased Wipro's Spectramind software (which they in turn had bought from someone else and messed up) just before it went bankrupt. It also had hired large numbers of India, Inc. workers just before it went under.

Dell - Outsourced a lot of work to India over the past decade. Profits are now down 54%. Michael Dell once said "Stability is more important than growth".

United/Delta - Both companies brought their call centers back to the U.S. from India when they discovered that foreign call centers were harming their business.

HSBC - ATM software was taken over by India, Inc., ATMs began failing in 2006.

AIG - Signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture, collapsed in 2009.

Vodaphone - UK's top cell phone vendor has gone into major decline - in part because its CEO from India didn't do the job and walked out with over $41 million in compensation for doing nothing.

World Bank - Indian, Inc. fraudsters including Wipro were BANNED for 3 years because they stole data.

The verdict is in: Whatever else immigrants and foreign-born founders are doing to America, on balance, they are causing net harm to the U.S. economy - harm that is the cause of our current economic problems. No amount of hype, news stories, studies, or commentaries will change the above facts about the effects of foreign guest workers on the U.S. economy.

A huge army of conmen from India numbering into the several millions have spent a decade cleaning out America's economy. America's moronic MBA managers and boomers who know nothing about technology have been conned by this elaborate PR-driven charade and have been duped into throwing Americans who created IT out and replacing them with incompetent conmen. The end result is what you see now: a destroyed American economy and a vast transferrence of America's wealth to India. People like Vivek Fraudwha are India's cheerleaders and keep shouting from the rooftops that this is good for us, but based on the state of the economy, it clearly isn't.

Now you know the exact chronology of what has happened to America's economy and who is responsible. All the fluff you hear on the evening news is just cover or what has really happened: we've been invaded and plundered by foreign interests that's all.

Capital crisis? Nah - remittances. Guest workers send $45 billion year from the U.S. home to India. $70 billion to Mexico. And that's just those 2 countries. The total is in the hundreds of millions. Keep siphoning that money out year after year and it leaves American banks and lands in Indian banks. And we wonder where all the credit has gone - credit is capital sitting in banks. Except that after a decade of this nonsense, it's no longer sitting in U.S. banks where it would have been lent to businesses to create jobs. Duh.

Housing collapse? Subprime crisis? Nah - mortgage-paying Americans no longer having the jobs or incomes to pay their mortgages - because their jobs were taken away from them and given to cheaper imported workers who have no interest in living here, only in working here so they can send our their money home. There were no subprime loans in America's booming economy of 1998. Sure Barney Frank helped contribute, but that's not the prime cause. No jobs, no mortgages. At least not ones Americans can afford. The banks too are complicit in this: they give out too many loans and run the housing values way up in boom times due to excessive demand, then they flood the labor market and collapse the economy by laying everyone off. Homeowners who have been making payments for years lose all that cash, plus the interest, plus the house too - the banks end up with the money and the property. Pretty nice deal - if you're a banker.

Record federal debt? Nah - suplus elimination by the Fed banksters who control us. In 1998 Bill Clinton sequaled "We've cured the business cycle". Greenspan chimed in: "We should use the Federal surplus to pay down the national debt". Uh oh. Red warning alarms going off in every Fed building in the country (and in a lot of castles in Europe and in The City in England too). Surpluses put bankers out of business. A boom like the 90s lets everyone pay cash. No need to borrow much. Bankers don't like that. Hence, since they control our money supply through the Fed (it's illegal for the U.S. government to issue its own money due to The Federal Reserve Act of 1913), something had to be done. But what? First they tried Open Source to try to kill the value of proprietary software. That didn't work - smart companies continued to protect their inventions. The banksters finally figured out the best way to wreck an economy is to flood it with unproductive workers and replace the super-productive ones who are creating the boom. When salaries are high, tax revenues go up too. When salaries are low, tax revenues go down. Hence, to stop a surplus, all one has to do is get rid of the highly-paid workers, and replace the with lower-paid ones. If you can actually destroy the jobs in the processs, you put the brakes on the economy even more. Hence another reason for the flood of IQ81 people from India replacing America's most brilliant American workers whose IQs are in the 140 range.

That did the trick - that and pilling on even more debt through never-ending unecessary wars which cost billions.

So now you know the history of how the American economy was really wrecked - don't let the blow-dried morons on the news fool you.

Re: It's about "skilled" immigrants

Every immigration wave to the U.S. since 1900 has led to recession or depression. The late 1998-2000 wave was the biggest in U.S. history - bigger than the one from 1906-1920. Historical facts do not lie. Here is the history of immigration and recession to America since 1900:

1906-1920 - Huge wave from Europe - Great Depression in 1929.

1965 - Ted Kennedy's Immigration Reform Act - Big recession 1973-1981

1990 - H-1B started - recession 1991-1993

Oct. 1998 - H-1B caps raised form 65,000 to 115,000 per year - collapse in 2001.

Apri 2000 - H-1B caps raised from 115,000 per year to 195,000 per year - collapse in 2008.

The fake "recovery" in the mid 2000's was no recovery - just cheap Fed credit making up for Americans losing their jobs.

America was built by Americans. Every buildup leads to immigrant takers who come in when times are good, strip the economy, then leave when times are bad - as they are now.

84% of the current U.S. population was born here. Do you seriously expect us to believe that 84% of the natives live off the work of the other 16% immigrants? Come on, stop being either a liar or delusional. Immigration is a disaster for America.

China and India don't have open borders. Did I mention they are booming.

Free Trade caused WW2 - America in the 1920s sold its scrap steel to Japan and England's Rolls Royce sold aircraft engines and factories to Hitler. We all know how that turned out.

Start living like a North Korean

If you are really tired of the economy (and who isn't) then the best thing for you to do is start living like a North Korean.

Living like a North Korean means the absolute basic essentials for the next year. Just buy food, cut down on driving, don't make any nonessential purchases, etc.

Let's face it. We don't have many middle class jobs anymore and IT is being reduced to minimum wage.

Let's all work together proudly to get Americas savings rate to the highest in the world. Let's start trying to save 25% of ones income. This would be a good idea in any event as most probably don't have a rainy day fund of two years.

This sounds cruel but if Americans are not working then we can't pay the bills.

The Americans that are working and buying really are not helping fellow Americans but mostly rich CEOs who either offshored the work or use low cost H1Bs. Saving money won't likely cost fellow Americans their jobs but simply result in others getting laid off and maybe as a buyproduct some CEOs as well.

If you are going to die economically by a thousand cuts of wage cuts and reduced hours then do it by sitting down and buying nothing.

Ironically this is going to happen quite soon, the biggest export the US has is pieces of paper called the US dollar. Last month's trade deficit was $50 billion dollars which is an annual rate of $600 billion.

The US can't keep this ponzi scheme up much longer. What is going to happen with when being anybody's guess but I suspect it is between 2012 and 2015 is that the US dollar takes a big hit. The Indian H1Bs among others that send their money back home are having the receiviers of said dollars convert them into other assets.

Re: Re: Don't you ever get tired of going off the deep end?

> "If we bar all the intelligent educated hard-working talented people from entering the US, I'm sure the situation here will improve."

Most H1Bs are ordinary people, doing ordinary jobs. This has been confirmed by the US General Accounting Office. In fact, the GAO confirmed that over 50% of H1B jobs are entry level.

These jobs could be done by US workers, but employers prefer indentured servants, and lowered paid employees. Also, hire a lot of H1Bs makes it that much easier to offshore the jobs, which is the eventual goal.

Re: “THEY’RE TAKING OUR JOBS!!!!!”

H1Bs are not creating jobs. In fact, H1Bs are not legally allowed to create jobs. An H1B is a temporary work visa. H1Bs have to be sponsored. H1Bs cannot go into business for themselves. H1Bs are not immigrants.

Also, about 99.99% of H1Bs are nothing special. We already have the O-1 visa for the truly gifted.

H1Bs are not creating jobs.

Not completely true. They're creating jobs in INDIA. They're often used to facilitate offshoring. 1st step - blackmail US workers to train their H1B replacements (courtesy of Infosys or Tata). Then fire US workers, start moving systems (including PII such as SSNs and medical data) to India

Re: incubation

Ah I see. So it's better to deprive these skilled US citizens of resources that allow us to work to our potential, improve our communities, increase our standing, and be more capable to effect real improvements in the USA?

How much advancement has been impaired by increasing government regulation, taxation, and diversion of investment? How much and what proportions used to be, before H-1B (and creationand expansion of L, J, E-3 and the flood of student visas) invested by US employers in bringing US citizens across the country for interviews that no longer is invested this way? How much and what proportions, before H-1B, etc., used to be invested by US employers in relocating US citizen talent that is now used to promote the careers of non-citizens? How much and what proportions, before H-1B, etc., used to be invested by US employers in education and training of US citizen employees (both new-hires and retained employees, and, because the issue of age discrimination has been raised, especially those over the age of 35)?

guest-work visas encourage off-shoring

Guest-work visas encourage off-shoring. The first thing they're used for in many cases, is "knowledge transfer", as US workers are required to train foreign workers. In some cases, e.g. John Deere, they're used as pilot projects to see whether work can be off-shored. In most, the guest-workers are used as a communications and additional knowledge transfer conduit from US workers to the off-shore operation.

Of course, the explosion of student visa have helped drive the explosion of guest-work visas, and the transfer of US approaches to research and development off-shore. And those (together with the flood of other work visas and illegal aliens) have negatively affected early "helper" and intern opportunities and mentor/protege opportunities for US teens and university students and new grads.

"the point of HB1 visas, to bring in enough talent so wages don't get out of control"

STEM compensation in the USA has never been close to "getting out of control", and the data show that.

Before H-1B we -- US STEM workers -- were always proud that we had a meritocracy. The people who came up with the best inventions, the best improvements, etc., got the highest compensation (not just "wages", but total compensation), and everyone else thus had a great incentive to come up with the next great new thing, to work until the goals are accomplished without watching the stupid clock. The flood of foreign labor have undermined that.

They've also undermined professional ethics. Look at recent "innovations". Many of them are merely privacy violation schemes.

Re: Answer one question, cheap labor shill

What Masnick apparently means is that we should only pay attention to selected data which he erroneously thinks support bringing in cheap, pliant, foreign labor with flexible ethics, but, in his opinion, we should not pay any attention to the vast amount of data and dozens of studies which point to a plentiful supply of brilliant, creative, talented, knowledgeable, ethical, industrious US citizen STEM workers (declared by even former cross-border bodyshoppers to be the best by every measure), to the continued abuse of guest-worker visa programs to support off-shoring, to the many studies which confirm that guest-worker programs are abused to drive down compensation in the USA (and, in some cases, to abuse the guest-workers, themselves), and to displace the afore-mentioned US citizen STEM workers.

Studies

Articles like this are pumped out all the time to try to justify the 'no qualified Americans' spiel. Tom Friedman in his column in today's NY Times mentions a US college populated by Chinese students, many of whom had perfect Math scores on the SAT.

So they'll do well here, take a job on an H1B visa, then take it all back to China..

And that helps the US somehow?

Why don't our own people study math and eng and get 800. We're not stupid. We invented 96% of tech. A few generations of Americans developed the infrastructure,the compilers, the Operating systems, the networks, the database, the CPUs, the whole shooting match. Now we need Chinese or Indian 'geniuses' to code in Ruby and build a new tweetdeck?

Friedman is clueless about that of course.

Americans who have to live in this expensive society when they graduate are turned off from STEM by salaries and competition dragged down by cheap imported labor.

Studies, telling the truth, getting censored

Or perhaps better put. If you remember the old adage : I want you to join the US army translates into corporate America as I want to train your H1B replacement.

H1Bs are "insourcing" visas with Americans often as a condition of receiving their severance training their H1B replacements who take the jobs back home to their countries.

Another interesting thing to note is that if "you don't toe the party line" then you are likely to get censored. A good particular example is the Dice bulletin board. While perhaps the following is boring, notice the pattern that is likely to occur when you don't agree with the "mainstream media"

1. You are ignored.
2. You are labeled as a "nutcase" instead of arguing on the facts.
3. You get "censored". To be fair, everyone has the right to deny speech on one's site. Just don't go around and claim to be "fair and balanced"
4. The "censoring" organization comes up with bogus justifications for the censorship.

If you don't spew the party line or better described "call out" the party line as "complete garbage" then you get banned.

Dice goes out and peddles "How great the economy is doing ?" "Tech worker shortages" etc. At one point, Dice to its credit toned it done was using its bogus job count as indicative of a booming job market.

In short, "If you don't drink the koolaid" and try to tell the truth then you might get blacklisted.

After getting banned then the banning organization will come up with bogus reasons for getting one banned :

Dice's explanation

>> This thread has been locked due to continued off-topic discussion.

hoapres was contacted numerous times regarding his violations of the Dice Community Guidelines. Because of his long-standing relationship with the community, he was also given more chances to correct his behavior than usual. This forum's policy is that continued violations will result in a loss of posting priviledges, which hoapres was made aware of. If you have any further questions for the moderation team, please contact us via Private Message. Thank you.

Re: Studies, telling the truth, getting censored

Yup - DICE went fascist in its moderation,(censorship) BIG-TIME!

I do not expect that I will contribute any further posts, to the DICE forum, as I do not want to contribute to, encourage, or in anyway, signal approval of, Orwellian group-think censorship, and propaganda.

Dice censorship

Clearly Dice can do what it wants on its bulletin boards. i thought it was kind of tacky for Dice to claim "...contacted numerous times ..." when that was hardly the case.

Surprisingly, I gave Dice credit for even allowing viewpoints that did not conform to "Drink the Koolaid" being allowed in the first place. I did suggest the possibliity that Dice would shut down the bulletin board all together.

Dice certainly went heavy handed in its censorship which certainly was in its perogative but I have the impression that Dice's censorship was hardly consistent.

Employers crying shortage of qualified applicants

Dice quotes CompTIA article claiming employers can't find the required skills. CompTIA to put it mildly is somewhat suspect since it pushes dubious certificates such as the A+.

Dice's Feffer gives the "standard career advice" which is fine as it goes. Feffer misses the point that we simply have a shortage of jobs. If you don't have enough jobs then you can (and should) do all the "standard career advice" which may very well improve your odds but it may very well be that you won't get the job.

Interesting was the phrase :

Then, I went to CompTIA’s Breakaway and listened to employers grouse about finding too few candidates with the skills they need, and lamenting the fact that computer science degrees leave people with a lot of theory and math but precious few job skills.

Let's see as one of the commenters pointed out :

Go to college for 4 years acquire student loan debt and get a CS degree which should be enough to land you an entry level job. But wait, now you have to go out and spend even more time and money to get training to get an unpaid internship resulting in getting a job paying $12 an hour.

While the above paragraph may seem satirical, unfortunately it is more likely to be quite accurate.

Employers crying shortage of qualified applicants

Dice quotes CompTIA article claiming employers can't find the required skills. CompTIA to put it mildly is somewhat suspect since it pushes dubious certificates such as the A+.

Dice's Feffer gives the "standard career advice" which is fine as it goes. Feffer misses the point that we simply have a shortage of jobs. If you don't have enough jobs then you can (and should) do all the "standard career advice" which may very well improve your odds but it may very well be that you won't get the job.

Interesting was the phrase :

Then, I went to CompTIA’s Breakaway and listened to employers grouse about finding too few candidates with the skills they need, and lamenting the fact that computer science degrees leave people with a lot of theory and math but precious few job skills.

Let's see as one of the commenters pointed out :

Go to college for 4 years acquire student loan debt and get a CS degree which should be enough to land you an entry level job. But wait, now you have to go out and spend even more time and money to get training to get an unpaid internship resulting in getting a job paying $12 an hour.

While the above paragraph may seem satirical, unfortunately it is more likely to be quite accurate.

Feffer

Feffer

While clueless might be a little bit too strong, the phrase "out of touch with reality" might be a tad more accurate.

The sad part is that NO ONE (or so it seems) checks the factual basis of the artcles. CompTIA claims over 400K unfilled technology jobs and of course is prepared to offer "training". Just the small overlooked detail that CompTIA offers certs might question the objectivity of the article. And "common sense" seems to be totally absent.

Come on now.

Does anyone believe that 400K unfilled technology jobs exist with employers knocking on doors looking for people really exist ?? If that was truly the case then everybody would know about it instead of just being told that is the case.

The reasons for Dice banning hoapres

The reasons for and not the actual banning of hoapres from Dice are relevant.

Only Dice can explain its rational but I suspect that the banning was not based on the constructive advice for potential H1Bs to stay in their home countries. Said advice was based on that the IT job prospects are likely better in their home countries than in the US.

The real reason (or perhaps the straw that broke the camels back) was the fairly rapid (often within minutes) of my posts challenging Dice's assertions of "tech recovery", "jobs are plentiful", etc.

Dice perhaps got tired of me pointing out (some may say too often) that it's prominently displayed XX,XXX tech jobs with XX,XXX being approximately 80,000 was totaly bogus. As those who are interested and the threads are still available, when 10+ agencies compete for the same job then Dice counts that as 10 jobs.

While using the tech job count ad on its website might be dubious, Dice (in particular Tom Silver) would go out in public using their bogus job count as indicative of "the booming high tech field"

To be fair to Dice, Dice appears to have stopped using their bogus job count.

"Once this story gets started then it is hard to stop". A Nashville business organization claimed that "Nashville was hiring" based on adding up all the job ads from Craigslist, Dice, monster, etc. (of course every job ad was considered a job) and claimed that over 1,100 IT jobs were available. Frankly, I was surprised that the number was 1,100 given the number of multiple agencies competing for every job. I suspect that 90% of job ads are fake so more likely one was looking at about 110 and not 1,100 jobs.

Dice Censorship

hoapres was not the only user banned, they banned a number of us when we pointed out that our posts were in fact being silently deleted without cause - meaning without any violation of Dice message board policy.